This session presents some of the approaches and activities used to engage students in the study of domestic architecture as part of an upper-division topics course in Art History on the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. Students were transformed into "Century 1" Real Estate Agent Trainees and, after learning about the ideal Roman house plan, explored the non-ideal residential environments that Pompeians actually occupied. Real houses and archaeological data were used to create oral and written "realtor reports" that emphasized the good - and underplayed the negative - features of actual houses from the region. Students also made proposals to imagined house-builders about the best way to design and decorate houses for irregular and/or small plots of land that I adapted from actual Pompeian homes. Through these activities, students were able to relate the space, decor and social use of these ancient spaces with their own experiences of modern environments.
